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HE SONG OF THE ANGELS, one of William Bouguereau's
most famous and beloved works, is due to go on loan to the Getty Museum, where
sources tell us it will be cleaned to hang on December 1 - just in time for Christmas and the holidays.
The Getty hanging a major William Bouguereau with much fanfare - the Getty often considered a trendsetter for museums
around the world - is no small matter. Perhaps the combination of this hanging and the planned four museum show William
Bouguereau and his American Students,” organized by the Philbrook in Tulsa with the help of a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts, will go a long way to help to restore this great master to something approaching his rightful
position as one of history’s consummate masters.
In other news, the reduction of The Song of the Angels recently
sold for $1,588,000 on April 20 at Sotheby's,
New York. While works by this 19th century master have gone for as high as $2,600,000 and $3,500,000 in recent years,
they were all full, life-sized, major paintings. This was but a reduction of a major work, and has therefore set a world
record for a Bouguereau reduction.
In addition, other Bouguereaus performed well; including $889,000 for
Child Braiding a Crown of Flowers, setting another world record: this time for a three-quarter length figure.
Other major successes included a world record for a
Waterhouse portrait - his Portrait of Phyllis Waterlo
which sold for $349,000 - and Alma-Tadema's
The Discourse. A meticulous
painting of two Roman scribes deep in discussion, the Alma-Tadema was expected to sell for between $140,000 and $180,000,
but actually soared well beyond the estimate, going under the hammer at last for $307,000, including premium.
A Boldini masterpiece of a society woman and
her son went for just under a million dollars. However, this writer was surprised to see it sell so low, as it was
clearly the finest Boldini to come on the market in years, and an inferior work by the same artist sold for slightly higher not long after.
Another triumph of the auction was the sale of
Leon-Augustin L'hermitte's A Rest from the Harvest, a vignette of peasants resting from their agricultural labours.
Whereas Millet painted his peasants on a monumental
scale so that they seem epic, larger than life, L'Hermitte's Naturalist aesthetic, with its insistence on scrupulous documentation,
brings out the more intimate or accidental qualities of the subject. His robust modelling of rural labourers was much admired by
Van Gogh. Although expected to sell for between $120,000
and $160,000, the L'Hermitte nearly doubled the highest estimate, with a hammer price of $296,000.
Victorian Neoclassical and Aesthetic painter John William
Godward also impressed, with two works selling well in excess of their estimates. The recently rediscovered
He Loves Me,
He Loves Me Not takes up the theme of the anxieties of romantic love, a theme which never seemed to exhaust Godward's imagination.
With a background of serried cypresses blocking the outside world, Godward's classical maiden is placed into a realm of reverie.
The marble wall against which she leans is painted with a virtuosity rivalled only by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Estimated at $175,000 to
$225,000, the painting was sold for a generous $296,000. Godward's tondo painting of
The Answer performed even more stunningly.
As perfectly designed as a Roman cameo, Godward's maiden sits on a marble bench staring pensively at the ground. A strip of sea and a
luminous Mediterranean sky are the background. All the veins and mineral impurities of the marble are brought out with the sensitivity
of painted flesh. The painting sold well above the estimate for $307,200.
In the number of substantial 19th century painters represented, and in their stylistic variety, the April 20 Sotheby's sale only
confirms that the resurgence of academic art in auction houses and store rooms has been accelerating in tempo. The Getty's decision
to clean and hang a major Bouguereau, and the Philbrook's upcoming NEA-sponsored four museum show, is certainly more than circumstantial.
It is representative of an irresistible return to academic painting in the very institutions where it was for so long reviled and from
which it had been exiled.
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William Bouguereau
La Vierge aux Anges
Translated title: The Virgin with Angels
Alternative title: The Song of the Angels
1881
Oil on canvas
84 x 60 inches (213.4 x 152.4 cm)
Museum at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Glendale, California, USA
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